Posted
by
michaelon Friday June 28, 2002 @01:48PM
from the super-breakout dept.

Atarian writes "Atari was officially incorporated 30 years ago. While many thought Atari started the video game business, that was not correct, it was Magnavox and its Odyssey console designed by Ralph Baer that would be the first. Atari would be the company that would put videogames on the map right from the start back in 1972 with the release of PONG, its coin-op arcade machine first setup in Andy Capps Bar in California, the game was a smash hit and people begin lining up first thing in the morning at Andy Capps just to get inside and play games on this magic box with a TV inside. Atari would then release its VCS (Video Computer System aka The Atari 2600) and launch Atari from its meager $500 starter capital beginnings into a $2 billion dollars in sales monster in 1982. Atari would later fall to the wayside to be replaced by Nintendo, then Sega, and othes that followed. Atari is still around in a small way, and still keeping the name and spirit alive to this very day, 30 years later. 'Have you played Atari today?'"

No, actually it is not freaky. Atari has decended down and been purchased, acquired, or something along those lines by Infogrames. Infogrames is a big software player in Europe but has small brand recognition in the States. They figured for marketing that they would be better of using the Atari name and logo in the U.S. where it would be more recognized than Infogrames.

So when Neverwinter Nights was going to be released by Publisher Infogrames, what name did they use? Atari of course. Not freaky. Just a sound business decision for those that have never heard of that particular European company.

My heart skipped a beat seeing that logo. I thought to myself "Whoa, what the heck is that? I wonder how Atari messed up the game?"

Really, my fond memory of Atari games took over, those chunky graphics, monotone sounds, and the endlessly repeating *fun*, and I got a bit nervous. Nostalgia is good for selling something old fashioned, but is not a good marketing idea for selling something new.

NWN will help build the Atari name, to help push the images of games like ET out of my mind. But does it really matter? I don't buy games just because it was produced by a well known company (not after FF8 that is). I will do what I've been doing for years (with the exception of the aforementioned FF games) which is try to get into the beta test, read the previews, beg my reviewer friends for a copy, download the demos. It doesn't matter to me who's logo is the outside of the box as long as it's a great game.

Atari now is nothing more than just another brand used primarily to capitalize on the nostalgia associated with the Atari corporation of yore. The only connection Infogames has with Nolan Bushnell's Atari is that they happen to be the latest in a long line of companies since Warner Bros(Jack Tramil, JTS, Hasbro etc) that have bought and sold the intellectual property/trademarks associated with the Atari name.

Incidentally June 25th marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner. Atari's long decline, which began after the great video game crash of '83, has long been associated with the so called 'Blade Runner Curse'. Atari, along with Pan Am, Cusinart, and Ma Bell were just a few of the companies whose logos were prominantly featured in the film only to suffer a complete financial collapse in the 1980s. Other companies, such as Coca Cola, suffered minor setbacks(i.e. New Coke) while others such as Budweiser and TDK emerged unscathed.

Incidentally June 25th marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Blade Runner. Atari's long decline, which began after the great video game crash of '83, has long been associated with the so called 'Blade Runner Curse'. Atari, along with Pan Am, Cusinart, and Ma Bell were just a few of the companies whose logos were prominantly featured in the film only to suffer a complete financial collapse in the 1980s. Other companies, such as Coca Cola, suffered minor setbacks(i.e. New Coke) while others such as Budweiser and TDK emerged unscathed.

So you're saying some companies did poorly, some did OK, and some did great. SPOOKY!!!

Depends what's wrong with it. Cleaning it out usually works. Open it up and clean all the dust off all the boards and chips. We have a working 7800 here, and quite a few games. Trying to get the 2600 sticks though, they are so much better than 7800 sticks.

Another source of joysticks are Commodore 64 joysticks, which can be up to ten years younger, and IMHO many of them were much better designed and more likely to last. They can make River Raid a lot more fun, since it's far less frustrating to crash when you feel more like it was your fault, and not your input device's fault.

Commodore 64 joysticks can do diagonal, but it doesn't seem to confuse the Atari's too much.

Also an option are the original Genesis controllers. Use "B" as the fire button, and the pad as the directions. Again, Genesis can do diagonal, but that's OK.

On holiday (in Playa del Ingles, Grand Canary, in the Canary Islands recently) I spotted two fully boxed Atari 2600 systems for sale for 15 Euros (~ GBP10/15USD) each. Also on sale were at least four clone systems at 10 Euros a pop.

I was tempted to buy one - £10 for a piece of history! - but decided not to as I'm sure the one that I had as a kid is lying in the loft right now just aching to be brought down again.

So, if you want an Atari 2600, and a holiday in the sun to boot, visit Playa. The store concerned is a TV, video and music outlet one the first floor of the "Jumbo Centre" shopping precinct.

I know this doesn't directly answer your request, but have you considered using an emulator?

The bright side of using an emulator to play the 2600 games is you may find games you never knew existed!

I got into SNES emulating a couple of years ago, and I thought it was cool that I could play around with the Japanese versions of games. Very fascinating stuff. You may find something out about your Atari that you didn't know about.:)

My early six-switch Atari is in mint condition and sits in a primary space in my entertainment center. I have 120 games, controllers, etc. I just recently hacked my 2600 to get RCA video and audio outputs; much easier than using that old TV/Game switch on the coax line, so I'm playing it more often now. Pitfall. Best game. Period.

All were acquired through your friend and mine, Ebay. It is *the* place to find vintage Atari items.

There is also a store, BEST Electronics, that pretty much only sells Atari stuff. Check out their web page here: http://www.best-electronics-ca.com/

Try more like hundreds. Even if you count bootleg and import versions of games, you're still talking in the 800 or so range, IIRC. It's a major milestone for a collector to pass 300, and expensive to pass 500. Even the NES only has in the 800 range, but most of those are unique games.

Jaguar had such potential and like previous Atari systems it was ahead of its time. Unfortunately the developer support just wasn't there. I owned a system and I don't think I can even recall the names of 5 games available for it. Maybe one day they'll make their return as a console maker. For now though they've gone the way of Sega and produce/publish games. Not only for consoles but for PC.

At it's time atari was way ahead from anybody else.
Too bad Atari brazilian cartridges where low quality and none of the ones I own survived until today, but I can download the roms and play it with stella on linux.
Note: downloading roms if you own the original games is legal. (Even that they're broke I still own them)

The golden age of 8-bit computers. What can you say? Not only was Atari the foremost console manufacturer at one point, but they produced a decent home computer. I still have my 800XL and run M.U.L.E. on it occasionally when I need a fix. Or 7 Cities of Gold.Nothing like nostalgia to remind oneself of one's age.

Now tell me... was there a game that ever had as many game play options as the classic Combat? There were DOZENS of them... planes, tanks, mazes, visible, invisible, bouncing rounds, rapid fire, etc. etc. etc.

I can still remember my little sister and I playing this for HOURS. Good times...

Several years ago, "Chase The Chuckwagon" was going for $250+ on eBay. It was considered the 'Holy Grail' of a 2600 collection.

Only to the unwashed masses. To a serious collector, it's not that important. Crazy Climber or Rubik's Cube or Quadrun are much harder to find. My CtCw cost me a dollar, in a two-pack at a thrift store. Two years ago, no less. My Crazy Climber took two weeks of waiting for a set to go for sale at a computer resale shop.

Show of hands: How many Slashdotters remember seeing that first Pong game? I would have guessed it closer to 1975, but such is my fading memory. I read that Nolan Bushnell installed the first quarter-operated Pong machine in a Bay Area pizza restaurant, and the next day the owners called to complain that it was broken. He went to check it, and found that the reason it wouldn't work was that the coin box was absolutely stuffed full.

You young sprats today can't appreciate what a weird feeling it was to twist a knob and see, up on the black-and-white TV screen, something responding to the motion. It was one of those "everything has changed" moments.

I remember going to Disneyworld with my mom for the bicentennial (1976 -- the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence for those of you non-USAers). I kicked her butt at Pong in the motel lobby in Orlando. That Christmas Santa brought me the garrish yellow Magnavox Odyssey 300, which played three variations of Pong.

A "hockey" style where each controller controlled two paddles and you had to get the ball through a small "net" opening

A "tennis" mode where you had to get the ball past the oponents paddle

A "handball" mode where you took turns hitting the ball off a wall.

I whined and cried when we couldn't get the darn thing working Christmas night when it had been working earlier in the day. Turns out we had an AC adapter with multiple jacks available, and I had the polarity reversed.

I still hate hardware to this day.

Anyone want to buy my old Odyssey? I'll make sure it still works before shipping it.

Ah, those were the good ol' days. When video games were still in cartridges and having an Atari meant you were cool.

I'll never forget how I spent endless hours playing Pac Man, Asteroids, Defender, Tron, or about a zillion other games on the VCS. It is ALL about Atari.

Nintendo, Sega, the 3D0, the Playstation (or PS2) all suck in comparison to the stalwart Atari game console. Now I'm in the mood to sit on my driveway in a lawn chair, enjoy a Negra Modelo, and reminisce about the good ol' days. Oooooooh well.

can be found at Warren Robinett's Adventure here [warrenrobinett.com]. Arguably the coolest Atari game of all time, it was one of the first games with an easter egg, and a "Zelda" type interface. Dragons, castles, goblets, and a bat, and it all fit in 4K of memory. The most telling thing about this, they paid him $22,000 a year, and they sold 1 million copies of the game, at $20 a pop.

It was a lesser cousin to the Amiga, both being based on the Motorola 68000 chipset also found in old Macs of course. Amiga had the edge on colours and sound chips, but the ST was a workhorse in a lot of recording studios because it had built in MIDI ports with the 5-DIN jacks which you could plug in with your regular keyboard cables needing no adaptor.

I had an Atari ST (first series) with :

Single sided, double density 3.5" drive (320KB formatted) which I upgraded myself to a double-sided drive, involving cutting the case because it wasn't an "official" upgrade - my first case mod at just 13 years old...

16 colours simultaneously from a palette of 512 (RGB values from 0-7 respectively) which you could up to a full 512 onscreen by changing the palette registers several times then waiting for a vertical blank and looping again)

There were 1, 2 and 4Mb versions as well - studios all had at least 1Mb of RAM because Cubase wouldn't run in 512Kb (except the cracked versions).

Loads of great games were out for it, and some good cracking crews with much less of the pretension of the new WareZ k1dd1ez... they had to snail mail disks amongst themselves pretty much...

I learned a lot of my trade on that Atari ST. It was a 16 bit architecture, ahead of its time for its price, and trained my hands on a mouse, touch typing, and of course coding in STOS Basic and later 68000 assembler (remember devpac, anyone)?

I, too, cut my teeth on the Atari ST...520 ST to be exact, no hard drive. I had an attachment to that machine that bordered on the criminally insane. Remember programs like Degas and Neochrome (paint programs)? How about the great games like Dungeon Master, Bloodwych, Rick Dangerous, Vengeance of Excalibur (I think it was called), Targhan, Switchblade...I could go on and on. I'm surprised at the quality of these games given the hardware capabilities...they were quite impressive graphically and otherwise!

How about the demoscene...anyone remember Punish Your Machine? How about those old Lost Boys demos? MAN. I'd kill for a PC port of these things...

Amiga had the edge on colours and sound chips, but the ST was a workhorse in a lot of recording studios because it had built in MIDI ports with the 5-DIN jacks which you could plug in with your regular keyboard cables needing no adaptor.

The built-in MIDI was nice, except that the implementation was non-standard. IIRC, they rigged the passthrough to save costs. This worked fine for completely standard MIDI equipment, but failed with others.

I also had several STs. The first one I'd upgraded by piggy backing 256Mbit (??) *chips* onto the ones on the board. The second one used the EZRAMII upgrade board to get a whopping 2.5M. One really cool tool was a device called the Spectre GCR. Along with the rock steady display of the SM124 monitor, it allowed an ST to emulate a Mac Plus. I wonder what ever became of the legendary Dave Small??

Do you remember GFA Basic? I wrote hundreds of little applications in that interpreter, including several math graphing applications. Back then, a high resolution plot (i.e., 640x400) would take *hours* to complete. That I can do the same plots in under 1 second on my Duron 1.3G is pretty amazing:)...

I still have software for the ST, including the Megamax C compilers, some version of Pascal and Fortran, GFA Basic, and Dungeon Master...

Ah, but the MIDI port worked wonderfully for the all important MIDI MAZE, a game where smiley faces wandered through a maze in 3d and shot at each other (predating Wolf3d by some time). Up to 16 players, all connected by $5 MIDI cables. We used to get together and play all the time. I even ran permanent cables under my carpet down the hall to my roommates room so we could play in comfort.

A friend of mine who worked as a manager in Atari during the biggest revenue period said that the Warner Brothers entry to Atari resulted in a peculiar culture running the show and turning the upper stories of the organization into the biggest party he'd ever seen. Lear Jets, coke and lots of perks. The jokes about "knee-pads" were supplanted with folk lore about how notice of promotion was handed out during that period: You look up at the underside the of the desk while servicing your superior to see the words: "You've been promoted."

I was working for General Computer in 1982, the company that created a hack of Missile Command called "Super Missile Attack". It plugged into Missile Command boxen, replacing the ROM to make the game cooler. Anyhow, Atari sued and we had to build a couple games for Atari as part of the settlement (Quantum [klov.com] and Food Fight [klov.com] [I built the prototype boards for these games]). At the time, I was a huge Devo fan (I mean, what self respecting geek of the time wasn't a Devo fan), and I used to brag to everyone that I was working within the same corporate monolith (Warner Brothers at the time) as Devo.

And you neglected to mention the single most important creation of GCC, the Atari 7800? The Not Invented Here syndrome partly contributed to the initial shelving of the 7800, but it was a pretty capable console.

The 7800 was also the first console to use cryptographic lockout protection to prevent third party games. (Not surprising, considering it was developed in the shadow of MIT and RSA.) Only in the current generation are consoles again using cryptography in their lockout protection.

And you neglected to mention the single most important creation of GCC, the Atari 7800?

Excellent point. I helped a bit around the company in early 1983, wiring new office space, but I wasn't really there for the 7800. I had a housemate in 1986 who had been a 7800 developer, so I did get to play with the system while it was in limbo.

A lot of musicians still have Atari ST computers in their studios. Thom Yorke (of Radiohead) often wears a t-shirt with an Atari logo on stage. And recently Infogrames bought Atari, so we'll probably be seeing a lot of games released under the Atari brand (Neverwinter Nights being the first of those).

Cubase on the Atari ST is a great tool. Still got my TT030, which is basically a beefed up ST. Best part about the TT030 is a it can drive a 1280x960 monochrome display. Excellent for editing in Cubase, back when viewing multiple windows simultaneously was a Big Thing. Except lots of compatibility went out the door with the TT-- Notator, for example, doesn't work. Along with most of the ST games. Still got my VCS 2600 for the cartridge games though. Now if only I could find some joysticks & paddles...

On the Moulin Rouge DVD, Fatboy Slim, aka Norman Cook, talks a bit about how he uses his Atari Computer to do his electronic music. He said that he uses it because it's all he knows how to use. Plus, it still works great, so why upgrade?

My first computer: an Odessy 2000. It had these little paddles with round dials we used for pong and kicked so much butt.

In addition, it was the first (only?) console to have a baseless mecury joystick for games like Space Rescue. This joystick decided the direction you wanted to go by where you pointed it. It was accurate as hell for that old box too. Only problem was that if you got tired you could just rest the joystick on anything...:(

That company should be a study in how NOT to run a business, 10 yrs growth to build a brand name up there with Coke, then 10 years steady decline to oblivion. Bushnell cashed out just a little too early, Warner couldn't manage it, then Jack Traimel made a valient attempt, and eventually got the Swordquest [geocities.com] prize over his fireplace.

Anyway, I was happy to find a 1979 Sears 'wishbook' with the Atari 400 in it. Also, the way to run a classic Atari 800(XL) system today is use the APE [atarimax.com] (Atari Peripheral Emulator), run it to your PC serial port, then you can mount disks from a PC and have tons of Atari software (my entire collection fits on a CD) at your fingertips. It also daisy chains with a normal 850/1050 fdd if you need to get data on/off 5.25" floppies.

You know... that !$@$#% annoying game where you were a little spaceship and you had to fly over the pattern of dots on the screen in a certain number of seconds to advance to the next board... which had more dots in a nastier pattern with less time, etc...

I think I went through about 10 controllers just on that game, I had a bad habit back then of throwing them around the room when I didn't finish a board. That has got to be one of the hardest games I ever played. I have ninjalike reflexes for my age and I give sole credit to that game for them.

Other favorites... damn...

River RageYar's RevengeDig Dug ($30 for a game was a lot back then!!)AdventureBerserk (guilty pleasure I know)PitfallTron

Anyone know how many carts were published for the 2600/7800 series of Atari Games?

Considering the rough ride Atari has had in recent years, I was quite surprised when I got my copy of Neverwinter Nights last week and discovered that one of the prominant company names on the front (and in the opening credits) was... Atari!

I wish them well, as without the venerable Atari 2600, I might have never wandered down the home computer path, and then I'd have to find something ELSE to blame my lack of a life on.

From the vector classics such as Tempest and BattleZone (dating myself), to Hard Drivin'/Race Drivin' (the first great driving simulators, IMO), Steel Talons (helicopter simulator), STUN Runner (I *so* want a Shockwave on the freeway sometimes), and the Rush series (San Franciso Rush, Rush 2049)... all have had fantastic game play. Heck, after too much Race Drivin', I finally couldn't play driving games without good force feedback. How else do you know when the wheels are on the edge of losing grip? 8-)

Never had one at home...my parents thought video games were a total waste of time. That didn't stop me from playing them at other people's houses, though.

I picked one up off of eBay last year, along with sticks, paddles, a driving controller, and some games. Just like old computers, old video-game machines are dirt cheap—and much more fun than emulators. (A cartridge that could be loaded with downloaded ROMs and played would be nice, though...doesn't somebody make such a device?)

Listen to the beeps as the Atari reads each sector of the disk. After a time, you will hear a different sound, or a pause or something. This is the bad sector!

When playing your duplicated disk, simply open the drive door at the right time, then close it.

Most of those games are looking for a disk error, but they don't care which one!

I remember Ultima ][. Turn Atari on, wait 19 beeps, flip the drive door...one...two...close! The 1040 drive was the best for this because it had the little lever on the front that allowed for accurate timing.

The Atari logo is also in Blade runner.
Maybe Ridley Scott should get Lucas to go in and replace it with an sony logo.

Interestingly enough, most of the companies that were featured in the futuristic world of Blade Runner have since gone bankrupt. So many, in fact, that this observation has been dubbed The Blade Runner Curse [scribble.com]

Screw the reissues. Just download MAME and you get to play the EXACT SAME game you remember as a child.

...but there was something they had which was like a four screen version of asteroids which looked cool has heck, years ago...

I always thought a very underrated Atari game was Warlords which was kind of a 4-person cut-throat version of Breakout. You had to defend your "castle" against a bouncing ball and use it to destroy the castles of your 3 opponents. Cool game.

Combat was the shit! there was something special about being able to play 27 different versions of the same game... all on one low capacity cartridge no less.

Those old videogames will always have a place in my heart because they were challenging and simple (not to be confused with "easy") at the same time. Today's modern games do not interest me at all. I work hard all day long and when I come home I don't want to read some kind of manual to learn how to play a game. And screw thinking! I just want to lean back in my easy chair and blow up some aliens or eat some power pills.

Combat is a prime example of the beauty of simplicity. Each of those games was pretty straightfoward. It's immediately obvious what you're supposed to do. And if you get bored with game #17 on the cartridge, just click over to another variation. Combat could keep you entertained for months. And it probably took almost no time to code up. I don't understand why today's games don't make an effort to return to maddeningly addictive, simple games (like Tetris). Wouldn't churning out games like this be more profitable then spending months rendering some photorealistic first-person dungeon shoot-em-up?

And I was envious of people with ColecoVisions. All I had was a Coleco Game System, the predicesor to the ColecVision. It had about 6 built-in games, all of them variants of Pong. They were all hard wired in and you selected them with a switch.

Before Atari, I had a Fairchild Channel F video game system. That one came out at about the same time as Magnavox Odyssey I wish I still had it, but I took Commodore's offer for a $100 rebate for trading in you old video game or computer with the purchase of a Commodore 64. I do still have my C-64, but having the Channel F too would rule. Did anyone else have one of those?